Annoyance
by Ruingaraf
Summary: Riza Hawkeye discarded romance novels in favor of mysteries. Why? They were both poorly written and completely inaccurate. Mangaverse, Hawkeyecentric, Mustang/Hawkeye.


"Annoyance"

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist/Hagane no Renkenjutsushi

Universe: Manga/Brotherhood

Rating: T (Nondescript sexual references)

Pairing: Mustang/Hawkeye

Summary: Riza Hawkeye discarded romance novels in favor of mysteries. Why? They were both poorly written and completely inaccurate. Hawkeyecentric, Mustang/Hawkeye.

Notes: My Hawkeye muse venting a bit at the facts that people think she reads romance, the romance genre in general, and how that sterotype is applied to her and Mustang,  
both in fanfiction and in the first anime. If I had to give it a timeline, I would say preseries.

* * *

It annoyed her when people asked if she was reading a romance novel.

Why would she be wasting her time with such a silly thing? If she had spare time, surely she would not waste it on the half-baked fantasies of middle-aged married women. Her qualms with the books in question were endless.

Every time she would read one of these books, hoping it would be different. Every time, there would be a handsome, remarkable stranger in the first chapter. And every time, _he_ was the love interest.

It was bizarre or illogical at best. Why did it have to be a stranger? If anything, you were more likely to love someone that you had known for years. According to these books, the best kind of love happened withing a few days, between relative strangers. Trust never seemed to be an issue in the least.

Lies. If that was true, she ought to go and fall in love with Scar. She certainly didn't trust _him_ within her range of fire.

Every time, there would be a woman in the books. A woman who could function by herself, even if she wasn't the most competent person. Every time, by the third chapter, she would cower behind the strange man for protection, real or feigned.

Ridiculous. If she really cared about the stranger, she would fight alongside him and do her best to keep them both alive, rather than practically _ask_ for him to be injured whilst saving her cowardly hide. There might be a latest desire in women to let men protect them, but it was an instinct from times long ago, before pistols and rifles. Or perhaps there was some confusion between trusting someone with your life and expecting them to be your personal savior.

Every time, there would be some kind of scene where the woman nursed the man back to health, whether it be from injury or sickness. And it would be absolutely _sickening_.

If you loved someone, you took care of them, yes. But you did not sit constantly with them, cater to their every whim and peel apples by their bedside. That was awkward and strange, not to mention slightly creepy. If you let the injured party have their own space, as they might at home, they were sure to recover more quickly. And wouldn't there be other things that needed doing? Even if the woman had taken off work, there were surely clothes to be washed and food to shop for.

And to make matters worse, the man would always pretend to be more sick or injured than he already was, in order to gain attention. Something like that would be horribly selfish and infinitely egotistical. Why would someone even consider doing that? If anything, you were supposed to grin, bear it, and push yourself- though at times she wished that Roy didn't push himself quite so hard.

Every time, it was seemingly impossible for them to touch without beginning to kiss furiously.

Brushes of hands were not sexual contact in the least. She could see how something like that would be comforting, or how one might become almost intoxicated by the warmth and scent of an embrace. But the authors seemed to confuse the meaning of intoxication in this sense with being high. Intoxication meant soothed, sedated, surrounded by the one that meant the most to you. It did not mean seized by an absurd and sudden urge to remove all clothing, which would surely be the work of raging hormones.

Every time, they would have spectacular, detailed sex in odd places, at roughly one-third of the way through the book and within the time span of one week after meeting.

How could you trust someone that quickly? Perhaps the Lieutenant was slow to trust, but she still didn't think that this was normal behavior. The unnecessarily high level of detail left her speechless as well. Did the reader really need to know exactly what kind of noise was made when the 'pert nipple' was rubbed? There was a fine line between description and flat out-erotica. The books usually did not even acknowledge the existence of such a line.

And odd locations... supposedly because they just couldn't want any _longer_. If it had been so long since either of them had had been touched in that manner... what was a few hours or weeks longer to wait? Certainly not impossible, as far as she saw. And it would make what had been postponed all the more intimate, if the pair waited until the proper time and place. But apparently, it didn't work that way.

Every time, this sex would be purely physical passion, with so much pent-up energy that neither party could even think about feelings.

If that was the case, what was the point of the action at all? If feelings weren't involved, it meant that it didn't matter who it was, so long as they were attractive. Feeling and monogamy were the two things that seperated human from animal in this regard, and people seemed to forget that.

Every time, the spontaneous sex would be treated as normal, and not incredibly awkward.

Supposing that one did copulate on the kitchen table with a relative stranger, it would have to be extremely awkward afterwords. In fact, it would probably be the kind of awkward that makes one want to sink through the floorboards and die. But for some reason, this never seemed to happen in the books.

Every time, there was a happy ending.

This is possibly what irked her the most. Endings weren't always happy - in fact, they almost never were. There was every chance that something, anything could happen, and the 'happily ever after' would be shattered into a thousand pieces. A story with a happy ending was usually one that wasn't finished yet.

And every time, she would find herself comparing the story to herself and Roy, and try to push the thoughts away. It wasn't something she should be thinking about, or even considering as an option, at least not for a long time. Not until he was at the top, still alive. Not until he had realized his ambition. Then, maybe the could look back and laugh at these foolish books, written by people who had clearly never found what they were writing about.

But for now, she read mysteries. Clear, logical, and where evil was always caught.


End file.
